Unraveling Somalia : race, violence, and the legacy of slavery / Catherine Besteman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Besteman, Catherine Lowe.

Series:

Ethnography of political violence.

The Ethnography of Political Violence

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Somali Bantu (African people)--Somalia--Qossoldoor--History--19th century.

Somali Bantu (African people).

Somali Bantu (African people)--Somalia--Qossoldoor--History--20th century.

Slavery--Somalia--Qossoldoor--History--19th century.

Slavery.

Slavery--Somalia--Qossoldoor--History--20th century.

Qossoldoor (Somalia)--Politics and government--19th century.

Qossoldoor (Somalia).

Qossoldoor (Somalia)--Politics and government--20th century.

Qossoldoor (Somalia)--Ethnic relations--History--19th century.

Qossoldoor (Somalia)--Ethnic relations--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In 1991 the Somali state collapsed. Once heralded as the only true nation-state in Africa, the Somalia of the 1990's suffered brutal internecine warfare. At the same time a politically created famine caused the deaths of a half a million people and the flight of a million refugees. During the civil war, scholarly and popular analyses explained Somalia's disintegration as the result of ancestral hatreds played out in warfare between various clans and subclans. In Unraveling Somalia, Catherine Besteman challenges this view and argues that the actual pattern of violence—inflicted disproportionately on rural southerners—contradicts the prevailing model of ethnic homogeneity and clan opposition. She contends that the dissolution of the Somali nation-state can be understood only by recognizing that over the past century and a half there emerged in Somalia a social order based on principles other than simple clan organization—a social order deeply stratified on the basis of race, status, class, region, and language.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Somalia from the Margins: An Alternative Approach

Chapter 2. Fieldwork, Surprises, and Historical Anthropology

Chapter 3. Slavery and the Jubba Valley Frontier

Chapter 4. The Settlement of the Upper Gosha, 1895-1988

Chapter 5. Hard Hair: Somali Constructions of Gosha Inferiority

Chapter 6. Between Domination and Collusion: The Ambiguity of Gosha Life

Chapter 7. Negotiating Hegemony and Producing Culture

Chapter 8. The Political Economy of Subordination

Chapter 9. Conclusion

Epilogue

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780812290165

081229016X

OCLC:

874154979